My first Supercharger experience

[Compuguide]

I took delivery of my M3 in the middle of September, so have had it for just over two months and in all that time I have been happily charging it off a 13amp plug.
I pop it into the garage at night, plug it in and in the morning have 90%.
Only on the rare occasion when I have done a long trip, will it take longer to reach 90%.
Anyway, today, I decided that I wanted to experience a supercharger.
My nearest location was at the Giant Blue Waters shopping centre in Dartford

The parking lots are vast and after driving around for the best part of half an hour, searching for the Super Chargers, I gave up, parked, and walked into the Centre to search for the Tesla Store and ask them where the damn things were!
The guy in the store said they were not allowed to signpost the Superchargers!
Anyway, once I knew where to find them, I returned to the car and drove over to them.
When I got there, there was only one slot free.
No problem, I plugged it into the car and then sat in the driver's seat to watch what happened.
I got a pop-up message saying something to the extent that charging was limited to 80% and charging was stopping.
My car was at 70% - so this shouldn't have been a problem.
I tried disconnecting and reconnecting a couple of times without luck. A helpful Model S driver in the bay next door tried as well with similar results and then suggested that as he was leaving, that I should try his bay.
This I did with brilliant results and had the car charged to 80% in about 15 minutes!

So, when it works, it works well, but for a first time experience it could have been better.

 

[booyaka76]

at 70% charge already - you'll get a very slow top up

 

[Big Earl]

I took delivery of my M3 in the middle of September, so have had it for just over two months and in all that time I have been happily charging it off a 13amp plug.
I pop it into the garage at night, plug it in and in the morning have 90%.
Only on the rare occasion when I have done a long trip, will it take longer to reach 90%.
Anyway, today, I decided that I wanted to experience a supercharger.
My nearest location was at the Giant Blue Waters shopping centre in Dartford

The parking lots are vast and after driving around for the best part of half an hour, searching for the Super Chargers, I gave up, parked, and walked into the Centre to search for the Tesla Store and ask them where the damn things were!
The guy in the store said they were not allowed to signpost the Superchargers!
Anyway, once I knew where to find them, I returned to the car and drove over to them.
When I got there, there was only one slot free.
No problem, I plugged it into the car and then sat in the driver's seat to watch what happened.
I got a pop-up message saying something to the extent that charging was limited to 80% and charging was stopping.
My car was at 70% - so this shouldn't have been a problem.
I tried disconnecting and reconnecting a couple of times without luck. A helpful Model S driver in the bay next door tried as well with similar results and then suggested that as he was leaving, that I should try his bay.
This I did with brilliant results and had the car charged to 80% in about 15 minutes!

So, when it works, it works well, but for a first time experience it could have been better.

Superchargers will show up on your navigation screen. You can press the lightning bolt icon on the bottom left of the map to display nearby charging spaces. This also shows how many spaces are in use at Superchargers.

 

[Skotty]

I supercharge several times a month due to frequent business travel. Usually they work great. Only once in St. Louis did I encounter an "iffy" stall that would only charge at partial power. Some caveats:

If station is busy, you will initially be limited to 80% charge even if you initially have it set higher (this can supposedly be overridden if needed), and idle fees will apply if car is fully charged and plugged in.

Try not to get in situation where you need to charge with a really cold battery. When this happens, charge rate can be reduced to a tiny fraction of what it would be on a good day.

 

[rotor2k]

Superchargers will show up on your navigation screen. You can press the lightning bolt icon on the bottom right of the map to display nearby charging spaces. This also shows how many spaces are in use at Superchargers.

Bottom left in the UK.

 

[Big Earl]

Bottom left in the UK.

Ah yes - right hand drive.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Another tip: If you navigate to the Superchargers and the navigation stops before you actually arrive at the Supercharger location, you can use the map or a site such as supercharge.info to find where the Superchargers are actually located. It does look like the parking lots there are massive but a quick check of supercharge.info or even Tesla's site shows that they are located in the southwest parking lot, relatively close to the Tesla store.

If they aren't shown in the correct location (such as on Google Maps?), then report the issue and get the location updated so that the next user has an easier time finding them.

P.S. I just submitted an edit to Google Maps to correct the location.

 

[DJP31]

Anyway, once I knew where to find them, I returned to the car and drove over to them.

if you use the nav to navigate to the SuC you can pinch/zoom the map display to give a close up of the route. Blue water is not somewhere you want to be driving around trying to find the chargers.

 

[CMc1]

Another reason for Tesla to add ‘What 3 Words’ to their SuC locations

 

[rotor2k]

This whole EV experience is exhilarating and frustrating. My first charge at a GeniePoint 50kW charger found me plugging in the Type 2 connector when I had selected CCS from the website (so of course it wouldn't charge). Took me a good five minutes faffing around stopping and starting the charge on the website and unplugging and re-plugging in the Type 2 connector before I clicked what I was doing wrong. I think there are still a fair few of that type of experiences to be had before we become EV "experts".

 

[Alan J]

I took delivery of my M3 in the middle of September, so have had it for just over two months and in all that time I have been happily charging it off a 13amp plug.
I pop it into the garage at night, plug it in and in the morning have 90%.
Only on the rare occasion when I have done a long trip, will it take longer to reach 90%.
Anyway, today, I decided that I wanted to experience a supercharger.
My nearest location was at the Giant Blue Waters shopping centre in Dartford

The parking lots are vast and after driving around for the best part of half an hour, searching for the Super Chargers, I gave up, parked, and walked into the Centre to search for the Tesla Store and ask them where the damn things were!
The guy in the store said they were not allowed to signpost the Superchargers!
Anyway, once I knew where to find them, I returned to the car and drove over to them.
When I got there, there was only one slot free.
No problem, I plugged it into the car and then sat in the driver's seat to watch what happened.
I got a pop-up message saying something to the extent that charging was limited to 80% and charging was stopping.
My car was at 70% - so this shouldn't have been a problem.
I tried disconnecting and reconnecting a couple of times without luck. A helpful Model S driver in the bay next door tried as well with similar results and then suggested that as he was leaving, that I should try his bay.
This I did with brilliant results and had the car charged to 80% in about 15 minutes!

So, when it works, it works well, but for a first time experience it could have been better.

Did my first Supercharger Session yesterday at Abingdon on the M74, only Tesla there and worked like a dream 300 MPH Charging at points !

 

[Compuguide]

Thanks guys for your informative replies.
Yes, I definitely would have benefited from some more in-depth homework/research
Tesla charged me £4.42 for the session.
I'd like to feed the charge into Teslafi.
can anyone tell me what I should put in these fields?

Here is a shot of the actual charging

 

[NorfolkMustard]

0.24

In the “per kWh cost” box. Nothing in the others.

nb some superchargers are 0.26 - check Tesla.com/findus for cost per location.

 

[Compuguide]

0.24

In the “per kWh cost” box. Nothing in the others.

nb some superchargers are 0.26 - check Tesla.com/findus for cost per location.

Many thanks

 

[MrBadger]

I got a pop-up message saying something to the extent that charging was limited to 80% and charging was stopping.
My car was at 70% - so this shouldn't have been a problem.
I tried disconnecting and reconnecting a couple of times without luck. A helpful Model S driver in the bay next door tried as well with similar results and then suggested that as he was leaving, that I should try his bay.
This I did with brilliant results and had the car charged to 80% in about 15 minutes!

Did it actually stop? Any chance you may have mis interpreted the message?

Basically, on a heavy usage super charger, by default, it will lower your charge limit to 80% if set higher. It is just an advisory so you can raise it back up again - iirc it was not like this in first release of that, and it was I think no override.

Basically the display says something along the lines of high usage supercharger, your limit had been reduced to/will stop at 80% but you can manually set a higher limit if you need more.

Was this what you were seeing? Or something else then charge stopped? I assume that the teslafi graph is from a different session as that shows starting SoC at 58% finishing at 81%. So well below your 70%.

Once helpful chap beside you had driven off, conditions for super charger may have changed, especially if you were pair sharing. At which point, you probably became the priority car and higher charge rates. Previously, you may just have been getting his leftovers.

 

[Big Earl]

Thanks guys for your informative replies.
Yes, I definitely would have benefited from some more in-depth homework/research
Tesla charged me £4.42 for the session.
I'd like to feed the charge into Teslafi.
can anyone tell me what I should put in these fields?
View attachment 481975
Here is a shot of the actual charging
View attachment 481976

Clicking the Supercharger pin on the map will provide more info about pricing, idle fees and current utilization.

Price per minute or per kWh isn’t showing up in my pictures below because the car has free unlimited Supercharging.

 

[Compuguide]

Did it actually stop? Any chance you may have mis interpreted the message?

Was this what you were seeing? Or something else then charge stopped? I assume that the teslafi graph is from a different session as that shows starting SoC at 58% finishing at 81%. So well below your 70%.

Once helpful chap beside you had driven off, conditions for super charger may have changed, especially if you were pair sharing. At which point, you probably became the priority car and higher charge rates. Previously, you may just have been getting his leftovers.

No, not from a different session, I was mistaken, thinking my Soc was at 70% - it was actually lower at 58% but I take your point, bay sharing might have been at play here.
Below is a photo of my first attempt and the Teslafi full list of four attempts - the last one being in the other bay.

 

[MrBadger]

Yep, thats the message all right. It shouldn't have stopped but clearly did.

Be quick and log it with Tesla to see if they can pull the logs. The TeslaFi date/times will help. It may be a problem with your car, or the supercharger, both need addressing by Tesla.

But it may just have been user error in how you inserted the charge plug. But Tesla should see from the logs.